Religious people are pondering the significance to their faith of potentially discovering extraterrestrial life. Which religions will be troubled by such a discovery? What happens to the concept of original sin? Did the death of Jesus also save the Klingons, or do they need their own savior? I think we can sum up the whole issue with one comment from the article.
That’s a serious theological problem.
Do you know how important theological problems are? Not important at all.
There was no original sin — Adam and Eve are metaphors, they didn’t actually exist. Jesus was an executed rabble-rouser (or metaphorical legend himself) with book after book after book of rationalizations and legend-building written after the fact. Both concepts will mean nothing to extraterrestrial life, except maybe as bizarre and peculiar myths held by the Earthlings, because they are not factual events or concepts.
If and when we find extraterrestrial life (as single-celled organisms beneath the ice of Europa, or alga-like patterns of biological growth on a distant planet, or in the form of signals from an alien intelligence), nobody should give a good goddamn what an ignorant rabble of priests think about it, much less how they interpret it and reconcile it to their books of superstitions. I won’t be looking up the latest papal declaration on Catholic dogma about it, except to piss on it.
I’ll want to know about alien biochemistry. Do they use the same metabolites, similar enzymes, similar pathways? What’s the structure of their genomes? What light do the similarities and differences shed on the origins of life? Do they use a similar genetic code? The same canonical 20 amino acids? Do they even use nucleotides and proteins? (I kind of expect they will, and be very surprised if they don’t). Do they have multicellular forms? What are their principles of development? (I expect big differences — just plants and animals on earth differ greatly).
There will be good questions and bad questions to ask. I can tell already that the theologians will be in charge of asking the stupid, negligible questions.
Yet another thing their holy books say absolutely nothing about, and they would have to rationalize after the fact.
I literally can not think of a more vacuous discussion than “pondering the significance to their faith of potentially discovering extraterrestrial life.”. Unless they just agree and understand it would be devastating.
*yawn* This is nothing new — C.S.Lewis’ essay “Religion and Rocketry” was published in *1958*. (It’s available online, for those who care. TL;DR: His advice was to worry about it if and when it happens.)
I’m not a biologist, but I also thought of those questions. Of course, if we find intelligent life, there’s also a metric f’ton of questions for the field of xenoanthropology.
Finding ET life won’t make any difference.
Religions, not being rooted in reality, evolve rapidly in real time. They change on year and decadal timescales.
Some will just deny they exist. There are still Germ Theory of Disease Deniers, Flat Earthers, 26% of the US population are Geocentrists, tens of millions think the universe is 6,000 years old, and as many believe in Supply Side Economics.
All I know is that the aliens will want to know of this emotion we call…”love”.
Also, having to come up with all the names for an entirely new phylogenetic tree…
Hermph… as is they ever learned anything from meeting alien *humans*…
It will shake a lot of people’s faith, and that’s a good thing.
That’s a serious theological problem.
When you haven’t got enough interesting problems to think about: make some up!
I am wondering how a photon feels about its wave/particle duality.
I ponder the moral dimension of smashing atoms.
The Krebs Cycle: beneficial or addictive?
Does it hurt when cells split?
Gosh! That was fun and easy. I guess that’s my takeaway from that little thought experiment: theology is pretty darned easy. It’s not even challenging. It’s like playing dress-up dolls with imaginary dolls: will you look at the insanely detailed 1812 11th hussar’s uniform on this one? What, you can’t see it? You lack faith.
I for one am excited to see what new advances await in the fields of imaginary beings! Their only boundary is their imagination! Just think: New answerless questions, exciting platitudes we have yet to discover, meaningless contradictions.
It’s an exciting time to be alive! Just think of the great real-life D&D campaign these guys are… wait, it’s not a tabletop game? It’s… oh no, they think it’s real.
I care. A lot.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I do not really give a damn about the theological implications. Nor do I care what the religious types among us will THINK if, or when, the day ever comes when we find that the universe is rife with advanced technological civilizations. Let them gnash their teeth on TBN. What I am concerned about is what the religious zealots will DO. When pushed into a corner they can be a capricious lot. I can hear the horrified wails on Fox News already. For instance, will they consider anyone who has claimed to have contact with said aliens to be consorting the enemy? Will atheists and other non-believers have to run for cover? Will armed locals in Texas and Mississippi freak out and shoot at anything unusual up in the sky? Will the born agains think the aliens are minions of Satan? We could see armed militias patrolling the streets at night to defend the populace from alien abduction. Would people who have claimed to be abductees be rounded up and questioned at Gitmo or other locations around the country? And, of course, the military industrial complex could see this as a good reason to ramp up arms production, to protect the Homeworld, of course. Who knows what kind of craziness could happen?
No, I am not at all sanguine about the prospects of alien contact and its effects on the current world social or religious order. It would be destabilizing in ways nobody can even imagine.
Should the day arrive when we meet ET, all the major religions will fall into line with the new reality very quickly. The religious authorities will find that the existence of intelligent aliens is fully in concordance with the tenets of their religion, and their adherents will quickly fall into line. It will be a non-issue, so no, not a serious theological problem at all.
There will be a few fundamentalists who will continue to deny the existence of aliens — not of the beings we call aliens, they will acknowledge their existence, but they will claim that they are spirit/demonic beings sent by Satan to deceive us. But their voices will be drowned out by the majority of religious and non-religious alike.
What would really be fun is if the aliens had been here for thousands of years observing and monitoring our development as a civilization. Imagine what would happen if they handed over raw video footage from the foundational times of each of the major religions — documenting the actual lives of Moses, Jesus, Mohammad, Joseph Smith, Buddha, etc.
I’d pay a lot of money to see that, and double if I could watch it alongside a bunch of religious fundamentalists, just to see their reactions (most of which would be denial, of course).
Mark Twain thought through some of the theological ramifications of ET in “Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit To Heaven”
From a societal point of view, I suspect very little craziness will happen. Firstly, when we make contact, the odds are it will be at a great distance (i.e. many light years away) with little prospect of a face to face meeting any time soon, and as soon as that realization sets in, people will go about their lives (religious or otherwise) pretty much as before. As I said above, I believe all the major religions will incorporate the existence of aliens into their theology very easily. They have to, otherwise they risk looking like fools for denying reality.
Second, If first contact is close up, here on Earth, then we’ll likely spot any approaching spacecraft months before it gets here. That pending meeting (even if we have communicated beforehand) will be a cause of great anxiety, no doubt, but as with the freak out in the US over Ebola, I suspect it will create more panic on social media than in real life. Most people have too much invested in their existing lives to want to upturn everything and go survivalist or foment a religious crusade or revolution.
If there is any turmoil, then it will be because of the financial markets crashing. Wall Street hates uncertainty, and when there is an impending visit from a highly advanced alien civilization, all bets are off.
Also, imagine if they come bearing gifts of advanced technology — low cost fusion reactors that work, medical systems that can cure cancer on a molecular level, new food sources, etc. etc. The value of many major corporations would be destroyed overnight. Whither the energy and health insurance industries? How would you be able to value any company’s portfolio if we suddenly have access to technology we wouldn’t have otherwise acquired for thousands of years?
But in the end, humanity isn’t anything if it isn’t a highly adaptable species. The long term benefits would no doubt be worth the short term upheaval.
I don’t know about Christianity, but Islam won’t have any problems. They already have it figured out:
Therefore ALIENS!
I would,however, be seriously concerned if Extraterrestrial Intelligent aliens had a religion of thir own. Just imagine an Intersteller Religious War (If it were possible to interact in person)
The real question is how biologists will react…
….when it turns out that the galaxy actually is full of aliens who are just humans with funny bumps on their heads, a la much sci fi TV.
On a more serious note the negative reactions of some folks who do believe aliens exist could be just as problematic as those of the highly religious. After all their beliefs are intertwined with various forms of conspiracy theories and other fringe beliefs. If aliens don’t comply with their ideas they may claim the aliens are faked by the government, or the aliens are hiding their true appearance and motives, and take action based on those conclusions.
When we find evidence of extra-terrestrial life, it will be a major theological problem. Just as the question of Jesus’ divinity/humanity/duality was. Just as the question of sex was (and is). Just as the question of good and evil was and is. Just as all of the different heresies — Gnosticism, Bogomilism, Catharism, etc — were and are, depending on one’s viewpoint, problems. And the problem will be dealt with the same way — handwaving, post-hoc explanations, lies, internal and external politics, and bullshitting.
when I look at humanity as a whole and focus of religion I see what?
Many many variations many different forms of god and religious explanations for life the universe and everything even in the nominal christian west there is not a lot of agreement regardless of the objections from the fundamentalist . So the it looks to me like everything destabilizes religion and some religions seem to crave and thrive on unstable situations.
The big question at the root of encountering any alien life is how much fear will it generate and in which population group? The thing to remember is the thread of paranoia that seems to run through modern world.
uncle frogy
Whenever extraterrestrial life turns up, I’m sure there will be plenty of people pointing out vague bits of poetry from various holy books and claiming it as “proof” that their prophets knew all about it. Like the whole “embryology in the Koran” business. I had some Jehovah’s Witnesses a couple weeks ago who pulled out the “God hung the stars in the firmament” as meaning the writer knew about space. Interestingly, he claimed to believe in evolution, but then said “but what I don’t understand is why there are still monkeys.” FACEPALM.
… Like Saad’s example @16! Perfect.
I for one would eagerly await to see just how Sophisticated people’s Theology would become if extraterrestrial life was discovered. I’m betting more schisms, many involving various flavors of Space Racism (aliens are demons, are unsaveable, are inferior because their planet didn’t have Jesus, etc.) , others postulating aliens as Angels, others saying that there were totally many Space Jesii, and then the usuals just taking refuge in metaphor.
Curiously, E.O. Wilson has also been contemplating extraterrestrials (among other things) in a new book and had himself interviewed by Brent Banbury just this morning:
http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Day+6/ID/2569812744/
Equally important question:
Does Princess Celestia raise the sun on their world, too?
It would be no more or less devastating then it was when Columbus discovered the Americas. They just claim that the Bible doesn’t contain all the truth, just that everything in the Bible is true.
I’ve recently been enjoying The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey (a non de plum for authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck); however, there was a character in the third novel, “Abbadon’s Gate,” that really annoyed me and ruined what should have been an awesome space opera. She was a Methodist minister who is part of a religious delegation brought on an UN mission to an alien wormhole gate out near Neptune as political window dressing. From time to time, Pastor Anna would muse how the gate, created from the horrendous events of the two previous novels, fits into God’s plan.
Hell, this filthy, baby-eating, atheist can tell you that: IT DOESN’T! Indeed, if anything the presense of ancient aliens, who can bend space-time to allow wormhole travel should pretty much put all of theism out of business. But no, I can assure you that the proper conclusion doesn’t cross this character’s mind as she shoehorns it into her theology.
As I said, a shitty character ruining an otherwise good book.
The Klingon’s mythos is already established!
Sto-vo-kor (or Sto’Vo’Kor) was, in Klingon mythology, the afterlife for the honored dead, where all true warriors went after they died to fight an eternal battle against great enemies. The halls of Sto-vo-kor were said to be guarded by Kahless the Unforgettable. The dishonored dead, by contrast, were ferried on the Barge of the Dead to Gre’thor.
According to the ancient tradition of ak’voh, whenever a warrior died in battle, others stayed with the body to keep away predators, allowing the spirit to leave the body and go to Sto-Vo-Kor. (DS9: “The Ship”)
Klingons could enter Sto-vo-kor by dying in battle or while performing a heroic deed. In addition, they could enter Sto-Vo-kor by allowing themselves to be killed by another Klingon. (DS9: “Children of Time”, “Covenant”)
Alternatively, in the event of a warrior dying as the result of a surprise attack or some other demise that lacks true honor, the relatives of the deceased could also perform such a deed in the name of the fallen to ensure their arrival in the halls, showing that the deceased has lived a life capable of inspiring others to great feats of courage.
AlanMac
*twitch*
I would be far more concerned about what their theologians say about us.
The Discovery Institute will then publish its first “real scientific paper” about how they reinterpreted a little known bible passage to prove they knew in advance.
Quite possibly new religions may arise that incorporate the aliens into their theology from the start. Some of these might go on to displace and replace existing religions.
History is littered with the corpses of dead religions and forgotten gods, all of which seemed unassailable in their heyday, capable of absorbing or hand waving away all new discoveries into their theology, right up until the moment when they didn’t anymore.
Who cares how the Christians will deal with extra-terrestrials. I’m more concerned about the Zensunnis’ reaction. What does the Orange Catholic Bible say about extra-terrestrials?
Well, first of all, they killed their gods and turned the heavens to ashes.
Maybe they have Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions, and there’s No Such Thing As Space Jesus.
Or perhaps If Jesus, Then Aliens, and they believe in Crystal Dragon Jesus. “Compare: Anime Catholicism, Nuns Are Miko, Hijacked by Jesus, Faux Symbolism, Interfaith Smoothie, King of All Cosmos, Fantasy Pantheon. See also You Mean Xmas and God of Evil. Not to be confused with Fantasy Counterpart Culture Christianity; a key element of Crystal Dragon Jesus is that it keeps the trappings of Christianity but substitutes a markedly different being in the deity’s role. Also not to be confused with Church of Saint Genericus, which is about churches whose denomination is unmentioned to avoid audience alienation/distraction. Sometimes it might occur alongside God Is Evil, especially if the work is meant to be a critique of Christianity. Is usually the center of a Physical Religion.” (Links omitted, they’re way too many.)
In short, all the possible speculation on this matter has probably been done. :-þ
frankensteinmonster
[Presses non-existent Like button]
My big concern regarding the discovery of intelligent extraterrestrial life is that it may turn out that the Fundies, by virtue of their long exposure to mind-numbing gibberish, will be the only ones immune to their poetry.
Once the religious leadership decides whether or not the extraterrestrials have souls, they’ll decide to start proselytizing. Missionaries will be gleeful that there’s someone new to harass. Or, maybe it’ll be the other way around. Or, maybe the extraterrestrials will obey their own version of the prime directive and just ignore us altogether until we get our shit together and grow up. All things considered, I’d bet on them ignoring us. Conquering us would be a bad idea, because then they’d have to put up with our crap all the time.
It’s a fair bet that if aliens do visit Earth, they’ll have a religion. Assuming that interstellar travel is so ridiculously hard, expensive, time-consuming, and lacking in practical benefit that no sane species would attempt it, that leaves one motive for which sanity is unnecessary: proselytizing.
Have you heard the good news about Grzmbggl?
I remember a sci-fi book called “Illegal Aliens” where a bunch of alien jerks would land on some underdeveloped world. They’d announce they were part of a Galactic Federation and they were here to test to see if the planet was worthy of joining. Then they’d put some hapless beings through some dangerous tests. Regardless of what happened, they’d announce that world failed the test and will be destroyed in three weeks. Then they’d go into high orbit and watch what happens. If some aliens were to try that, all they’d have to do is transmit “Allah Akbar” for giggles.
Seriously though, I’d be more concerned with what fundamentalists are going to do rather than what it means for their superstitions. I can easy see them starting a holy war against these ‘demons’ sent by Satan to test the faithful. It would be worse if the aliens are (by human standards) ugly.
I wonder what it would be for science fiction. I half expect fandom to shut down, or at least be reduced, when first contact is made. All the books and movies we’ve consumed would rendered obsolete and outdated instantly.
“I’ll want to know about alien biochemistry…..”
Would it be ethical for us historically idiotic humans to disrupt and likely destroy an alien ecosystem to gain such knowledge? I have no romantic views of us being a spacefaring star trekking civilization given what we did to the native peoples in the Americas. Or is it possible to gain scientific knowledge without violating the prime directive?
If that’s the case, let’s hope they land in North Korea so Lil Kim keeps them out of our hair.
Given that it is already possible to investigate the biochemistry of, say, ants, without destroying the ant colony, I would hazard to guess “yes”.
My mind being mush (just worked my first 8-hour day since my back injury and it was 2 hours too long), I am trying to remember a story in which we make interstellar contact with an alien intelligence. All communication is via ‘radio’ and we are learning lots until there is a takeover of the alien government by theocrats who then set out to convert Earth. Finally, we humans call in some Jesuit scholars who study the religion the aliens have sent us and then start asking questions — really hard questions — and tie the alien theologians into such total knots that the theocracy fails and we finally get to start talking about real things again. I remember the story. Just no idea who wrote it. It sounds vaguely Asimovian.
Harry Harrison’s The Streets of Ashkelon is an interesting take on it…
Alverant@39 – “Illegal Aliens” by Phil Foglio and the late Nick Pollotta, TSR Books, 1989.
Johnharshman@38 – I’m reminded of Poul Anderson’s “The Word to Space” (under the pseudonym “Winston Saunders”), wherein we make radio contact with the planet Akron 24LY distant. And it turns out that Akron is run by an oppressive worldwide theocracy, which has decided that we need them to proselytize to us.
So SETI hires an old Jesuit to read through all of Akronite scripture and come up with several hundred inconvenient questions.
Woe betide you, for you have transgressed against the righteous command of the Secondary and Tertiary Ones, namely, you have begrudged the Sacrifice and you have failed to beat drums at the rising of Nomo, even as your fathers were commanded.
dannysichel: That’s the one I was trying to remember!
…How stupid of me not to have thought of this myself.
*shudder*
Thanks dannysichel. Nick lived around here and I was going to ask him to autograph my copy of the book at a con but he had to cancel. It would have been his last con if he attended. Thanks Nick for the laughs.
I have no romantic views of us being a spacefaring star trekking civilization given what we did to the native peoples in the Americas.
Nothing as nice as an anal probe, for sure.
johnharshman:
Have you considered that they might come to Earth to serve man?
@2, nomadiq
Then let me introduce you to the interfaith dialogue at The Global Future 2045 Congress discussing “the evolution of consciousness” and different ways of acheiving transhumanism
If you’re wondering what 2045 is, here’s teh commercial.
I don’t know… I’m a bit fascinated by the question myself, mainly out of an interest in watching the contortions theologians and the average religious person will go through to accommodate or reject the existence of extraterrestrials.
I’m actually not losing much sleep over how the more fanatical among the religion will or will not lose their collective shit over our receiving a series of primes in a radio telescope. With due respect to Sagan and Druyan, I consider this an increasingly unlikely scenario for our first evidence for life beyond our planet, anyway.
With the sheer number of exoplanets we are adding to the catalogues, even with the still very limited means we have of doing so, and what we know of the natural history of our own globe, what I think is far more likely is we will be discovering a lot of algae, first. It’s a bit of a wild guess based on the still pretty limited means we have of seeing what’s out there, but it’s the best I got, anyway.
And what’s actually interesting there to me, among other things, is how frustrating it may well be for us, and for, potentially, a very long time. It seems to me we are likely to be in a position for quite some time where we’ve got increasingly powerful remote sensing capabilities tightening our certainty that there’s life in system whatever, that the spectrum coming off that orb, right there, just doesn’t seem likely any other way… There could be some pretty tense bunfights for a while over some of them, people saying okay, you could get that mix somehow abiotically, and maybe they’ll be right, and it could go on a very long time. Finding something as convincing as a lot of free oxygen would be nice; who knows if the first one is going to be that clearcut, that obvious, though… And even that, people might still be wondering: is there another way? Life, or some really weird abiotic catalyst we just haven’t thought of? It could, again, go on a long, long time. I could imagine a world in which we’ve dozens or hundreds in the catalogues, and people arguing over each, comparing them, wondering: is there a commonality between this group, is this a related set of circumstances, a similar kind of life…
… and even if we’re convinced about any given one, even if there’s other clues, spectra of something like chlorophyll, or something we model as a potential alien analogue, we could still be stuck speculating, potentially for decades or centuries, about just how the putative life there is doing that, exactly. I share the enthusiasm of those who would love to find there’s other ways, this thing doesn’t have DNA, it’s got something else entirely doing the same job, but the reality is: it may take a very long time to get close enough to work that out with any kind of certainty… Getting spectra, we can do, and in the next few decades, we’ll get better…
… getting anything close, getting a probe anywhere near, that’s a whole ‘nother level of engineering for us, as yet. Though it’s nice to think we might have some particularly powerful motivations, shortly, for getting better at that.
All of this alone, however–that very catalogue of potentially many places we think we see life–sure, is likely to mess with those still playing at literal interpretations of millenia old tales of cosmic bogeymen, a mite. But they’ll be in no better or worse position to cause mischief over it. It’ll be, rather, just one more thing they’ll have to paper over, as they insist goatherder whichever totally covered this in holy text whatsit way back when, really, honest, ya just gotta read between the lines… And, realistically, they’ll have a long time to accommodate themselves to the increasing certainty we’re not alone, in the more likely scenarios. So they’ll adapt. By making shit up. Same as they always do.
Now that other scenario, someone beaming us a message happening to contain the full text of the Encyclopaedia Galactica or just ‘Hey, how can we help?’, I dunno. Granted, yeah, we may indeed not deal too well with that…
… but I still think it not particularly likely. Nor more likely now than at any other time. Yes, in theory, we just became a little easier to see, thanks to the organized EMR we’ve been beaming out the last few decades. We may, in theory, have just distinguished ourselves from a myriad of other blue oxygenated balls in someone else’s catalogues, somewhere out there… But the realistic probability anything is out there at a reasonable range to notice that, it just doesn’t seem real high to me, yet, the density of planets we are discovering notwithstanding…
… so really, it’s going to be about our maturity, how we deal with seeing, but being unable to touch. Potentially for a very long time. The priorities we give that, that will make who we are. And the theologians, as PZ noted, as usual, probably will have little valuable comment on this, sadly, at the end. Let them debate the counts of angels on the heads of pins; the rest of us will have many more deeply fascinating questions, following on from any such discovery. You are not alone is one answer, maybe not even that surprising an answer, now, honestly, but one giving us a billion more questions. As those so generally tend to do.
No one (else) is curious about alien sex?
Naked Bunny with a Whip @ 6:
And some will be confused and infuriated by “wuv”.
“That’s a serious theological problem.”
Reality has *ALWAYS* been a serious theological problem.
You atheists make me laugh. You’re obsessed with religion more than any religious person, unaware that your constant preaching of atheism is religious-like in itself. You claim to be for free-thought but none of you are, you’re just as deluded, if not worst than the fundamentalists. “I think Jesus is a myth!” You would, you’re another uneducated atheist. Meanwhile most historians scoff at the claims made by atheists on Jesus. Keep ranting, your crusades against religion are in vain :)
zaxcvfd, when you religious types stop obsessing over controlling everyone else’s sex lives in the name of your fictional deities then I might stop laughing at you.
Actually I spend very little of my day thinking about religion. I think about much more fun things like physics. We only really think about religion as a defense mechanism because some of the religious seem to want to use their religion as an excuse to interfere in how others spend their time.
So yes, I think Jesus is a myth, and Thor is a myth, and Osiris is a myth and Zeus is a myth and pretty much every inhabitant of every pantheon out there somewhere is a myth. I don’t worry about what any gods might do because I don’t think they exist. I worry about what deluded people who think the imaginary beings are real might do.
it is funny from the point of view of an extraterrestrial there are many superstitions or religions that are practiced by the inhabitants of earth, some are in active disagreement with each other to the point of violence and war. very few of the practitioners ever acknowledge the legitimacy of the others even if they are able to tolerate their existence. It is also funny when the subject of religion and theologians comes up they can only hear it as their religion under discussion.
uncle frogy
As to biochemistry, I would not be surprised if ET’s had proteins, because the simpler protein-forming amino acids can be formed prebiotically. But nucleic acids are another story. It’s hard to form ribose prebiotically. One can try with the Butlerov formose reaction, but it requires relatively pure formaldehyde, and it produces a mess of sugars with several different sizes and the full range of isomers for each size. For that reason, it’s sometimes speculated that ribose was a replacement for an earlier nucleic-acid background molecule. So it’s unlikely that ET’s would have RNA and DNA, though they would likely do heredity in a similar manner, with coded molecules that serve as templates for their reproduction.
Could you explain this phrase, please?
zaxcvfd @57
We’re not obsessed with religion but we can’t ignore it either. You theists keep shoving your delusions at the rest of us in ways we can’t avoid: “You wimmens can’t have abortions ’cause Jebus hates abortions.” “The pope has declared using contraceptives to be a sin.” “Gays can’t get married because Gawd thinks what they do in bed is icky.” “You were disrespectful to Mohammed, you deserve to die.” Etc, etc, etc.
If you theists kept your religions to yourselves then we could safely take no notice of religion. But since you try to make us live by your rules we have to pay attention to what the religious are saying and doing.
zaxcvfd
Troll or sockpuppet or both?
Meanwhile, the subject of the thread is this: “WHO CARES?” How obsessive.
By the way, the answer, if you hadn’t noticed, is that some religious people are the ones who care. So at least some of us are less “obsessed” than they are. Of course, blatantly denying patently obvious facts is par for the course, so I’m not terribly surprised to see you take that route.
Are you sure that the insult you want to reach for, as a religion person, is that we’re similar to religious people like you?
Somebody doesn’t understand reality. We laugh at those delusional fools who believe in phantasms, and some book of mythology/fiction. We laugh at how they are so so unsure of themselves, they must reassure their sanity by making everybody else believe the same delusions.
Freethought is questioning dogma.
One dogma is cultural based delusions called religions. So, we, unlike you, show freethought. When will you question your dogmas?
Atheists don’t proselytize. We don’t give a shit about your delusions as long as you keep them where they belong, in your church and home, and out of the public square. Expecting you to behave with civility about keeping the public square secular is not proselytizing. It is merely good manners, which many religious lack.
When you realize the delusional nature of your imaginary deity, you will join us.
zaxcvfd,
Just one religious injustice is enough to warrant all the opposition and mockery religion faces. Since at least one injustice occurs because of religion, our “obsession” and “constant preaching” is warranted.
Jesus is a myth because people can’t walk on water and raise the dead. Horus is a myth too, by the way. Stop being so selective in your religious views, you bigot.
I have no idea what “claims” you are referring to, but the implication seems to be Mr Carpentersson existed, and (possibly) was a half-alien half-human. The later is biologically unlikely, not to mention the absurd magical properties assigned to the claimed alien “father” (who, incidentally, would be guilty of rape if the legend were true). The former has no creditable evidence: There are no artifacts (that is, no physical or archaeological evidence), and no contemporary accounts. Nor is there any supporting evidence, e.g., no records at all of any “census” or whatever at about the time in question of the alleged “birth”.
And if “most historians” claim otherwise, then you should have no problem in providing references: Books, scholarly studies, and similar. (Please be aware there is a limit to the number of URLs (links) you can post (as an anti-spam measure), so I suggest no more than three (3) URLs/references per reply.)
zaxcvfd @57:
Ever so glad to entertain you.
Now let me educate you.
Atheists often show concern about religion because religious believers keep trying to us their beliefs to justify discrimination and oppression of LGBT people, women, or People of Color. Theists often try to worm their unscientific beliefs into the classroom, working to eliminate the teaching of evolution as the explanation for the diversity of life on the planet. Theists also oppose contraception, stem cell research, and abortion on religious grounds. There are theists who don’t believe in medical intervention, preferring to let their friends or family suffer and die while praying for them to get better.
In short, many religious believers use their sincerely held religious beliefs to cause suffering in the world and that shit is why we speak up and criticize religion and its adherents.
@54, zaxcvfd
The funny thing here is how blatantly wrong your statement here is. You’re saying “you atheists”…but you are getting a biased statistical sample of atheists by using an anti-theist blog as your sample to comment on.
Worse, the claim that we have more obsession here than any religious person is so out of touch, it makes me wonder if you simply don’t know about them, or if you couldn’t think of anything correct to say so you decided to lie. There are many varieties of obsessed Christians, such as those with homeschooling obsessions, the Quiverful, the ones who actually thinik the world will end soon and think they won’t be able to enjoy a normal life because of it (they make endless predictions that fail), the “Christian Scientists” that shun medicine, the ones that worry that christian music is too worldly, the folks in Jesus Camp, the ones who tell us that god is currently using the stars to “shout” messages at us, the ones who worry about anything worldly causing demonic possession, and of course my past self who wouldn’t work on Saturdays or The Feast Of Tabernacles, or the cult we escaped from before where people sold their posessions because they thought they would have to live in caves as the appocalypse would arrive within the year…
I could go on.
Nah, too many people say that for me to be “unaware”. But I’m also aware that it’s a pathetic attempt to shut atheists up because you just don’t like the truth getting out. If political and intellectual activism, speaking the truth, and debunking lies is “religious-like”, then so be it.
Well, no. If you read The Christian Delusion, and it’s sequel, The End Of Christianity, (just for example) I doubt you would be able to come up with any way to say that atheists are “just as” delusional as that. Your only example is a weak peice of your imagination:
Like, I’m not even sure what the majority opinion atheists have on this issue is. They probably mostly believe some preacher existed who inspired the stories, just like most historians do.
But I have to point out the funny part! You couldn’t come up with any example except for a hugely irrelevant obscure issue that most people probably don’t even think about. I doubt even most christians, or any random sample of humans, are educated on the actual historical view on this issue. So tying the word “atheist” to the word “uneducated” is fairly desperate for you to do. Most Historians scoff all the more at the claims christians make about jesus. The historical view is very much against christianity, but totally sensible from an atheist standpoint. And there are historians who are seriously doubting even the modest historical jesus, while the majority have yet to look at the arguments that changed these people’s minds. Your whole sentence here falls to peices, and it’s the only shred you have. And, like I said, it was a pathetic shred even before it fell apart.
If by “in vain” you mean “the numbers of atheists are increasing” or maybe “some religious people are so delusional they won’t listen to the truth anyways” then…ok.
Prophecy from pop song:
♫The Vatican said, “Woe, the lord has come”.
Hollywood rushed out an epic film.
And Ronnie the popular said it was a communist plot.
[…]
The white house said, “put the thing in the blue room”.
The Vatican said, “No, it belongs to Rome.”
And Jody said, “It’s mine and you can have it for seventeen million.”♫
When a thing is as prevalent as religion, and causes as much harm as religion, only the most venally immoral would scoff at other people caring about the issue the way that you do.
This would depend not only on how likely ribose is to form abiotically, as you allude to, but also how easily DNA and RNA synthesis is to evolve. Since we already suspect that DNA evolved from an earlier RNA world, and it is certainly possible that RNA did as well.
If RNA and DNA have particular chemical advantages over other candidate molecules in terms of stability and replicability, and pathways for bio synthesizing ribose are relatively easy to evolve, then alien organisms may start with something other than DNA or RNA (just as earth life may have as well) and then evolve DNA and RNA through convergence.
It is a similar consideration when one speculates whether or not multicellular ETs would breathe oxygen.
if we found another “advanced” culture, it would be interesting to see if they also spent alot of time and resources worshipping imaginary super beings,or if the weird need for religion is unique to our planet.
brianpansky #70
Excellent comment.
I do hope that zaxcvfd actually reads it.
I can see the headlines already. “Inter-galactic War, After Biologist Dissects Alien Ambassador!”
Nah, not enough alliteration.
Since theology routinely ignores the existence of conflicting beliefs in its own religion, never mind the existence of other religions on this planet, I fail to see how and why the existence of peoples on other planets would make any difference. Christians, in particular, are so brutal – about non-Christians, Christians of different sects, and members of their own sect that they suspect of not believing their peculiar dogma and tenets exactly – I can’t imagine that they would have any qualms whatsoever of condemning all other life in the universe to Hell for not having had a chance to meet Jesus. After all, that’s what they happily do to most of their fellow humans.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Why would intelligent aliens invent religion? Or complex technology? After all, there are groups of intelligent animals on our own planet that have done no such thing, including some humans.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
zaxcvfd, I’m not impressed.
Is that really the best you could do for a drive-by?
The quality of Christian apologists, admittedly not very high to start off with, has plummeted since I used to follow them here in order to find some good arguments to bolster my then flagging faith. If commenters like zaxcvfd had been all that I could find, I would never have thought of attempting to learn from them, would never have followed them here, and would probably still be some sort of vague theist.
As it is, watching the horde rip to shreds the best arguments that theists could offer enabled me to escape the grip of religion altogether.
jste, how about:
Antares Army Attacks After Atheist Anatomises Alien Ambassador!
Tigger_The_Wing, but what if they’re from Betelgeuse??
jste @76:
All-Out Alien Attack After Atheist Astrobiologist Dissects Alien Ambassador.
It’s close, but I couldn’t think of a synonym for dissects that starts with an ‘A’.
Glances up at Tigger’s #78. ‘Anatomises’ works perfectly!
Not only do I have to wonder about the effort, it’s way too improbable that all the biochemistry is the same. The same nucleobases and the same sugar/phosphate backbone (which falls apart when kept in water) with the same sugar? The same amino acids beyond maybe the simplest ones? And it goes on.
D-amino acids are strong poisons.
It’s the same thing in Greek ^_^
Anatomise. That might be my new word of the week.
David Marjanović @ 82
So is ethanol. That doesn’t stop a bunch of mammals from deliberately ingesting it!
mmmm…
ethanol…
and pizza
as far as creepy alien invasions and the reason for same not many can compare to Torchwood: “Children of Earth”
unless someone finds out how to do warp drive we are at the mercy of the pitiless distances of the Universe
uncle frogy
Forget that! Let’s get to the REALLY important theological question! Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons? After all, if they were created beings, why would they have remnants of placentas? As Stephen Gould pointed out, that serious theological issue raged for CENTURIES and even influenced the course of art. Some medieval paintings of A&E had the fig leaves’ stems covering the area of where A&Es omphaloses would be so as not to take a position on this important issue!
Eamon Knight @ 3;
Stanislaw Lem also covered the issue in the novel “Fiasco” (1986)
Lem was of course a nonbeliever, but he considered the issue in detail from the viewpoint of a catholic member of the starship crew.
And in Lem’s earlier anthology “Star Diaries” he had already established that life on Earth was started by biological contamination from two aliens named Gord and Lod. :)
I can’t imagine that zaxcvfd @ 57 is going to stick around to respond – or even read – anyone’s responses, as that’s just too much work for god to ask of them, but what the hay…
(Bolded for quick tip: proofread before you copy/paste your generic rant. Spellcheck does not equal proofread.)
Think carefully about whether “You’re acting just like us!” is an effective insult or not.
Just sayin’.
Citation needed.
Again, way too much trouble for you to do for your god.
Actually, we seem to be doing reasonably well in getting our message out, and the world is a hell of a lot less religious than it has been in the past.
Also, you’re once again using religious descriptors (crusades) as a negative. Multiple times in a one-paragraph piece. Just turn that over in your head a few times.
I should stop reading this thread – more book recommendations?!
Do you think I should tell Son-Out-Law that, when he’s finished doing the painting and decorating in the new wing, he can start building another house for my library? =^_^=
…Turns out D-serine seems to be a neurotransmitter.
That’s the easy part. We take a look and see what terran lifeform it resembles, then we put a ‘xeno’ prefix in front of it!
What!?!?! It works for hollywood.